And So We Lie Down To Sleep
by CBK1000
Summary: 'There is a boy, and a girl. There is the boy's smile, and the girl's answering heart. And this- this is how all beginnings are made.' An alternate look at how the war between Marcel and Klaus might have come about.


**A/N: Ok, so originally I was going to try and somehow work the mutant baby storyline into this, but I decided, you know what, the writers are the ones who dropped that particular steaming load- they can clean up their own shit. So this is basically an alternate look at how the whole New Orleans thing might have played out, had Klaus' dead spunk not somehow managed to knock up Hayley. (Sorry to anyone who liked this storyline, I mean no disrespect, but it gave me flashbacks to Breaking Dawn, and the last thing I need to be thinking about while trying to enjoy Klaus is Bella Snowflake's sparkly uterus.) **

**The first part of this is connected to 'Where There Is No', which you do not have to read, but if you'd like the background for this first flashback part, I suggest you do. Also, you'll notice I played around with the timeline a bit, particularly in relation to graduation and Elena regaining her emotions. Also to the second power, I'm kind of done with the Silas storyline right now and really just want to move on to Klaus being awesome in New Orleans, so I really glossed over that part. If that bothers you, you may not want to read.**

**I have plans to do a couple of follow-up one-shots to this, since this is pretty much just the set-up, but we'll see if time permits, since TVD is kind of a side project for me, and my other writing has to come first. If there is anyone who likes this idea and has the time to write a multi-chapter to really explore this alternate look at The Originals, feel free to borrow it.**

**Oh, and before I forget, a 'gamine' is basically a street urchin, or at least it was back when Victor Hugo wrote about them, which is who I snagged the word from.**

**And last but certainly not least, this fic is for Habrina on tumblr, for the playlist she made for 'Lost In Waiting' (which I pretty much immediately added to my writing playlist, so thanks for the musical inspiration), but most of all for her enthusiasm, which was so encouraging to see, since this fandom is much different from my regular writing, and I still feel like I'm foundering around in the dark a bit. **

**I hope you like it, but if you don't, that's all right too. At any rate, thanks for brightening my day.**

**As always, if this sucks, major apologies.**

* * *

**Paris, 1830**

He lies waiting beneath the July sky.

Such a lupine thing, the sky, with its pelt of autumn and its skin of summer.

It doffs its coat of cinnamon for its mantle of white and then in roars the tender green shoots of springtide to break this mantle apart, and the _colors _this season ushers in, the way it paints over the world lying in its grave of white powder-

Is it any wonder that man would try to pin down such beauty with his oil and his charcoal, to hold such a marvel imprisoned in canvas and vellum?

To hold on.

Such a human sentiment- they grasp so tightly, these frail ant creatures with their lives crushed beneath the heel of time.

But there will always be something else waiting for him, another decade, a new century, and he has no reason to cling, to dig in with fingernails and bootheels and stubborn aching heart.

He has no cause.

He fears no man.

These fragile children all around him with their limbs like matchsticks- they come apart so easily, they are broken so quickly, and yet they with their mortality in its guillotine swinging over their heads crouch with muskets ready and cartridges waiting.

He hears their hearts, he smells their sweat.

They want so badly to _live_, and yet here they stand.

Far away, there is a drumming.

He hears each distinct cadence, the infantry's echoing _click_, the cavalry's hollow _clop_, and he does not move.

Fifteen years ago he stalked this city.

Paris' bedtime story: he waits in darkened alley with knives for teeth and talons for hands and the little gamines with their thumbing of the nose to all that is just and right- those he takes first.

The whores next.

And then the children who do not obey, who know no respect.

But this beast- he had a friend.

His mother cast him out and his father hunted him down but he was not alone.

Someone loved him back.

He was _worthy_, and then this too his father took from him and for fifteen years he ran on alone, and where is this part of the story- where is the chapter that tells of a boy who became a monster, who just _wanted _so bloody _badly_-

Where is the chapter that tells of a man who makes war but cannot die.

Where is the part that details how badly he wants to be one of these matchstick men blown apart by grapeshot and rained down in pieces.

Is this not a monster worthy of naughty children? Is a beast who wishes to die a creature to be pitied and not feared?

For eight hundred years, he has forced men trembling to their knees, and for eight hundred more he will go on compelling them to bow, but obedience is not loyalty; fear is not respect; the man who obeys without loyalty and fears without respect does not love.

He is just so bloody _tired_.

He has a thousand more years to sleep, and never will it be enough.

"Watch your ammo, boys. Pick your shots."

Someone nudges him with the toe of their boot. "On your feet- here they come."

He does not stir.

"_On your feet_!" the boy with his intrusive boot hisses, poking him again, and slowly he rises, musket in hand, cartridge box at his hip, and one more nudge, mate, go on and see what happens-

"Ready, men!"

The clacking of the cannon wheels over the pavement stirs nothing inside of him.

What must it be like, to anticipate?

To wipe the sweat from your brow and smear it off your shaking palms; to kneel with head bowed and hands clasped- to believe, to hope, to panic- he has none of these things.

But he had a friend, once.

You will not believe a claim like this, from a man such as him, but once he had lavished upon him a love without conditions, a loyalty without limits.

The soldiers march in.

The grapeshot rains down.

He loads with mechanical precision: flip the musket, pour the powder, hurry the ramrod down its barrel. Hammer to half-cock. On goes the cap.

He swings the butt of the musket up into his shoulder, flicks the hammer back, feels the recoil against his shoulder.

His supernatural ears ring with the thundering of the balls, the screams of the dying, the chipping away of Paris shuddering to pieces beneath the storming of war.

His comrades burrow down beneath the barricade with cartridges in their teeth and steaming barrels in their hands, but he need take no such precautions, and when his box at last has no paper to offer he throws down his gun and strides out into gunpowder fog.

The cannon roars.

The right side of the barricade collapses in splinters; the shattered doll limbs of the men behind it wing away into the sky.

He walks among them so casually with nothing but his hands and his red, red lips.

The horses he spares, of course.

The men he disassembles.

There is a morbid sort of fascination in opening a man up to see what lies within him. This 'soul' which is made so much of- in which organ does it reside; can you puncture it with the teeth, shred it apart between the fingers; what happened to his own when his mother's sorcery turned him from man to creature- does it lie somewhere within him still, withered, parched, a thing to be put out of its misery-

Demon, they name him, and pour everything they have into him, and still he advances, slowly; forgive him if you will, this little flair for the dramatic: hands clasped behind the back, blood unwiped from his beard, smile on his face.

But where is the _rush_.

His prey scatter, they scream, but nowhere in him does any of this resonate.

How frightening he must look to these men with his blank mannequin face and his empty porcelain eyes.

Fifteen years ago he told himself he did not feel and yet he burned with it.

Today he tells himself that there is joy in hunting these men, in snatching them up, breaking them apart- the smell of their blood, the siren wailing- he is _moved _by these things-

They turn their guns on him, fumble their ramrods, leave them where they sit protruding from the mouths of their rifles-

Yes, _good _-hate him- fill him full of this hatred, take away this bloody _emptiness_-

He swipes the little one in the corner, the boy with cocked hat and wide eyes, and he lowers his mouth and for so long he tears away and rips deep and it is not _enough_, give him _more_- turn him back _on_-

Shut it off, he told himself in her stall with her soft eyes forever begging please, _help _me, do not fail.

_Shut it off_, he demanded, but didn't she deserve _better _than that-

She loved him, you see. Without judgment, without reservation: simply, blindly perhaps, but she touched something in him his mother broke long ago and slowly she began to mend its edges, to sew him back together.

A man like him, a _thing_, is held together by faulty stitching: he is bound but only barely clings on and nowhere is there someone who sees merit in fixing something with so many fractures.

The muskets cough; he is caught up in a hailstorm, battered on all sides, and these stupid men in their bloody coats and their tip-tilted hats cheer, raise up their arms, but on he walks, forever advancing, the smoke in a wall between them, Paris in ruins around them, and what are they _waiting for_, fire the cannon, break him down into pieces, spread him across the streets- make him _feel_.

He stopped painting.

He abandoned the opera houses.

The man drowns beneath layers of monster, but he is still alive. He flounders, yes, but he does not yield, he has not yet been washed away, and he wants these things _back_.

"Fire!"

All over him is a hornet stinging, a fire, and still he walks, come on, mates, can't you do _better_ than this-

He did not flick the switch.

She did not deserve that.

Believe what you will about his soul, but he poured so much of himself into this one frail friend who fell to his father's sword and when Mikael's blade took her away so too did it sever something inside of him.

Despair, he believes the humans call it.

"_Fire_!"

He walks on.

There is the brief pop pop pop of another volley, and behind him he hears the sobbing of those who will not be going home, the roaring of the barricade men, the thundering of their boots on the pavement.

They have not seen.

They do not know.

They surround him as he walks on with his empty hands and his bleeding chest, chasing away these soldiers with no rifle, no sword, and what a _hero _he is, he sees it in their eyes, these dumb peasant beasts-

The one who laid beside him for hours talking of his mother and his younger brother, who wiped away his tears when he thought no one was looking- that one he kills first.

Listen to their cheering.

Hear the way it shifts.

The breaking of their young, young voices- such an impossibility, this splintering of something that has no bones to bend, but nevertheless they are smashed to pieces; their cries falter, their cheers waver, and still it is _not enough_.

Turn it back on, or end him now.

To live another eight hundred years without his art, his music- to leave him forever floundering alone in this void-

Yes, he is hateful.

Rebekah left him and his father hunts him and you don't _have to tell him this_, that he does not _deserve_, but he will not go on like this, not for another thousand lifetimes, _open him up_, make him _bleed_-

He snaps, tears, slashes with his teeth.

A few of the younger ones break and try to run, but haven't they seen how quickly he moves, how fast his hands dart out and his teeth sink in- don't make him _laugh_-

They rally.

They circle him with their bayonets and from one end to the other of this circle he is pushed, and they split his head with their banshee shrieks, their bloodlust screams; they fall on him like animals, stabbing -such _frenzy_- they are no better than him with his blood in a fine red mist on their cheeks, glistening in their beards, but look how he still fights back, how he snatches away their rifles and turns them back around to plunge the blade with a wet butcher's squelch into their throats, their brows, their chests-

A hundred wounds, he must have taken by now.

And still he stands.

Take him _down_.

They try to run, these brave men of the barricade.

Such messy creatures, these humans.

There goes that unwavering courage, right down their legs, pooling in their pants.

He kills until the smoke clears, until there is only one small teenaged boy shivering in his ammonia puddle, arms over his head, musket in a pile at his feet.

"_Please_," the boy squeaks.

He has known many boys like this.

Charming creatures. Unruly, of course, but they keep the men's spirits up with their jokes, their songs, their playful wartime banter hurled without pause over the wall to the other side.

He knew a boy like this at Waterloo, who made him laugh, who handled his horse so gently and ate his rations without complaining and died crying for his mother.

He kneels with a smile before this one small teenaged boy and lifts a hand to gently smooth the hair back from his eyes as he begins to sob. "Shh. Shh- there now, mate," he says so tenderly.

He eats the boy's face.

He stands before the cannon with mouth streaming and hands clasped.

The gun recoils; the ground shudders; he takes wing into the sky, up and up and out he flies, and how white the world flares, how strangely it ripples along the corners-

He lands in mud and blood and all the little pieces of the men he left behind.

Look down.

There is his ribcage, cleanly filleted. The organs do not pulse. His blood does not stop. Finally, you may think, at last, God prevails, the monster is fallen; see the demon as he lies.

And yet.

The oozing caramel strings of the heart reach out with tentative fingers to link themselves back together. The lungs twitch, stretch, mold their pliable clay sections back into a whole.

His sternum clicks itself neatly back into place.

He lies waiting beneath the July sky.

How _warm _his eyes are, he thinks, and shuts them.

* * *

**2013, Mystic Falls**

She listens to his message with an involuntary little smile on her face.

She spots it in her mirror and wipes it away with a scowl.

She is relieved he is gone.

She _is_.

* * *

Graduation.

The tinsel dust of the confetti; the thunderstorm roaring of the crowd, their gunshot applause- and all of this is echoed, turned back on itself, goes on forever and ever in her oversensitive ears, so how can the gym be so _empty_-

She smiles her Miss Mystic Falls smile, the one that hurts but looks so nice, plastered over everything she does not want to feel.

Graduation is about growing up, about moving beyond, she says in her Valedictorian speech through her Miss Mystic Falls smile; today is a whole new start, another life.

But she will never grow up; she will never move beyond, she in her in-between year, she does not add. When your heart does not move and your breath does not flutter, you're just sort of…_stuck_, hovering in between, trapped away in this weird sort of half-existence in which you're not quite dead but not really alive.

And maybe she likes this, maybe she wouldn't go back to the girl she was before, breakable, flawed, so easily struck down by Time's relentless hammer, but here's the _thing_, when you have eternity:

A thousand more birthdays are a thousand more opportunities to say good-bye. A million more tomorrows are just a holding pattern, a loop to snare you fast: once you start the circle you cannot stop, and imagine being caught in this revolution for a _gajillion _years, never getting off, never holding on-

God, people- they slip so _easily _through your fingers, bunny-fueled bionic woman or no.

She looks out over her podium and there is no Jeremy, there is no Elena, no Tyler, no Stefan.

Bonnie hugs her for so long after the ceremony is over and Matt kisses her forehead like a brother and she does not cry.

When the crowds disperse and the lights power down there is only her, sitting with hands knotted on the lower tier of the bleachers, toes buried in the confetti dust, diploma beside her, and she does not cry.

She opens her phone to scroll down through the contacts she still can't quite bring herself to delete, and she does not cry.

She doesn't understand.

She was supposed to. Her mascara is waterproof and in the pocket of her jeans beneath her gown there is a whole packet of tissues patiently waiting, but she was supposed to have a shoulder to cry into and a friend to hold onto, and maybe that is why there's nothing, maybe that is why she can only sit with her dry eyes and her untouched diploma, staring blankly down at her phone.

Maybe grief is a weight, and when you have heaped too much of it onto your shoulders all you can do is lie stunned beneath it, blinking.

"You look gloomy, Caroline. Didn't the crowds thrill to your rousing little farewell?"

She looks up to see him picking his way through the steel-backed chairs, smile on his face, hands behind his back, and this is how she knows her world does not make sense, not the way her superhuman hands bend the bleacher where they tighten, not the way he moves naturally with no human eyes to see him, all the way across the gym and then before her in a blink, but because her dead, dead heart does something at the sight of him, and _God_, she doesn't _want _it to-

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

He lifts his eyebrows and looks down with that little smile, and how can this thousand-year-old freaking _monster _be such a bashful…_boy_ with his dimples and his eyes that give away so much- tell her how this _makes sense_-

"I came to congratulate you."

She uncoils herself slowly from her seat, rises up and up and up until she is eye to eye with him, and she wonders if he hates that, the way he can't look down on her.

He does that awkward hi-there-a-thousand-years-and-I-still-don't-unders tand-that-nose-hair-close-is-not-acceptable-in-pol ite-company thing, and now one hand disappears into his pocket and what gets her is not the empty gym with its packed bleachers and its smiling students- what shifts her dead heart in her chest and all the unnecessary breath in her lungs is how _nervous _he looks, how reminiscent this is of the way he grabbed her arm and asked her to be his friend and the way that just sort of…_choked_ her.

A thousand years, and he doesn't know how to make a friend. A thousand _years_, a million people, and he didn't even know how to _ask. _It came out all tentative, and his hand on her arm tightened, not painfully, but enough for her to feel how slick his fingers were, the way they shook just a little, and what she wanted back in that moment was the Klaus who ran Tyler out of town, who murdered Aunt Jenna, because that Klaus she knew how to hate, that Klaus she understood how to hold away, but what kind of defense _is _there, against a man who reaches out, who just wants so badly for someone to reach back-

He slides his hand out of his pocket.

She looks down at what he is holding and smiles despite herself. "Another pony drawing?"

He looks down again with that half-embarrassed little huff of a laugh, and unrolls the paper in his fingers. "Not quite."

It's her. It is her, one cheek pressed to Elena's, the other plastered against Bonnie's, and she just…she radiates.

Elena poses with her head thrown dramatically back, lips puckered, and Bonnie crosses those beautiful dark eyes and sticks out her tongue, but she simply smiles, except it is not just a smile, it takes over her whole face, it shines in her eyes and indents her cheeks and it must have hurt, afterward, to relax her muscles down out of that grin, but, _God_, how young and unconcerned and _happy _she is.

She remembers this photo. It was overexposed, a little cloudy, with a thumbprint in the corner, but really it was better than most of Matt's pictures, because at least none of them were missing their heads.

And he has rendered it in soft grays and rich blacks that bring out her eyes, and there is something _alive _about it, something tangible about these three girls and what they had.

This picture tells of the sleepovers and the midnight calls and the afternoon shopping and there is no Elena the vampire, Elena the emotionless, there is only the Gilbert girl who found her crying on the playground eight years ago and took her away to play house.

There are only three friends, no secrets between them, no deaths hanging over them; in this picture her heart beat and Elena's thumped solidly beside it and they _loved _each other- you can see it in every _line _of them-

She looked out over the crowd where her father did not wait and _he _is what breaks her.

"Where did you get this?" she whispers.

"Prom. Apparently Rebekah had a bit of time on her hands, and amused herself with taking pictures of the gym. This was on one of the screens." He flicks his eyes up to hers. "I liked your expression. And I thought, recent circumstances being what they are, that you might like to have this."

Her eyes are so full and her chest is so tight, but she will not let anything fall in front of him, she will not lift her hand or blink her eyes, because he does not need to know what this means to her- he doesn't need to understand that she is just so _grateful _for this paper memory-

Elena conspired to kill his brother and for three days Bonnie held him imprisoned in the Gilbert living room, and he could have left them out, he could have focused on her alone, but they are drawn just as carefully, in broad strokes and thin crosshatches.

She _knows _she's not supposed to soften, to bend, ok, not when he has done so _much_, but when he looks at her it's like everything else just…goes away for him.

You can't _feel _like that and be lost. You can't have something like this lurking somewhere down deep, buried but still so _close_ and yet drift beyond, out of reach.

If someone had just _tried_.

"Well." He links his hands together once more behind his back. "Duty calls."

"Thank you," she tells him, and she does a damn admirable job of sniffling only a little, thank you very much, and carefully she rolls the page back up and sets it down on top of her diploma, and even more carefully she meets his eyes, crossing her arms over the front of her gown. "So…this New Orleans thing. Is this, like, permanent?"

He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "I seem to have worn out my welcome here in Mystic Falls."

She snorts. "Ok, like _that _ever stopped you."

The smile spreads, and this time it touches the corners of his eyes, webs them with wrinkles, and she is not at all entranced by the way he is transformed, how his face just comes alive at the touch of that smile.

"New Orleans was my home, about a century ago- a hotbed of culture, even back then, and I loved it. The theaters, the galleries, the street musicians- you'd enjoy it, Caroline."

"What about Silas?"

"Silas has what he wants. It's not my concern anymore."

"So you're not worried about a thousand _years _of supernatural enemies suddenly being released into the world? You're not worried that maybe a few of them are going to, I don't know, want revenge?"

"Are you worried about me?" He dimples again, and God, stop _doing _that.

"I'm just saying, is all."

"I'll leave the heroics as usual to the Salvatores."

He stands so still in front of her, just breathing the same air as her, and it's like there is something physical between them, hanging weightless in the scant space that separates his chest from hers, and of course she looks away, of course she breaks the moment, what else is she supposed to _do_- she loves Tyler and he is _Klaus _and just because he draws her pictures and he loves her so patiently, so damn _completely_- it doesn't mean she owes him anything, it doesn't mean she should acknowledge this little prickling _something _way down inside of her that flares out to seize her blindly by the throat-

"Well; as I said, I've business to get back to," he says, turning to leave with one last look he sends all the way through her.

"Thank you," she blurts again, and where the _hell _did that come from?

He stops and his hands linked behind his back tighten and the muscles in his shoulders knot, and all throughout him there is a coiling, a physical preparation, and it's like her words are a blow and he can only stand shuddering underneath them and a step, two steps closes some of the distance between them, but she can't take another, she _can't_, can he please understand this-

"I mean, not for Tyler's mom, obviously, or Jenna, or chasing Tyler out of town, or- you know what, I'm just going to stop here because this is just awkward now. But thank you. For the dress, for the drawing, for-"

For loving her after a thousand years of his mother's desertion and his father's disgust. For somehow inexplicably brightening this day that should have been a celebration and is instead a funeral, a burying of her old life, of everything she used to know.

For always seeing her first.

Things could have been different, you know.

See, there's this guy, and he was hurt, and instead of curling up tight and shielding himself away he instead lashed out, he decided freaking _screw _this, I will kick a hole in this world that spit me out and tossed me aside, and for a thousand years he went on hurting and hating and tearing down.

But there are the paintings. And his hands touched her hair so _softly _while she lay dying on that couch, and she knew he thought he could let her die, she saw it in his face, he clung so hard to his I-am-Hitler-hear-me-roar bravado, but that guy who for a thousand years went on hurting and hating and tearing down was once a human, and ten centuries have not yet stomped this out, and when he could have let her slip away, when he could have said sorry, love, for a thousand years my pride has sustained me when everything else has abandoned me, he instead lifted his wrist to her mouth, and he sat wiping his eyes while she fed.

And then there was this girl. Pretty; bouncy; accomplished. First in her class. Eight million extracurriculars. Miss Mystic Falls of the perfect curls and the pasted-on smile and the frail, frail heart beneath layers of bitch.

She always came second. Her father left her and her mother had better things to do, and this friend of hers- she was always one of _those _girls. You coiled your hair just so and you lined your lips just right and hello zits, meet Neutrogena On-the-Spot, but this girl, her hair always hung just a little more perfectly and her lips pouted just a little bit more and those zits never even dared show themselves on her flawless baby-butt cheeks, and always beside her you were just not quite up to par.

But this guy, he blew right on past this friend. He opened himself up and he poured himself out and this girl- God, how she wanted to patch him up and sew him shut and tell him it's ok, here is someone who cares, it's time to let go, step down, turn _away _from this mother who still haunts you and this father that taunts you.

And maybe if they had just met some other time- maybe if she could just _forget_-

But you can't undo, can you?

There is no going back.

She swallows and looks away from him.

"Just…thank you."

* * *

Wait, he thinks as he walks away.

Call this after him.

Ask him not to leave, tell him you still need his help- take this squeezing in his chest and loosen its hold, undo its grasp- wreathe him with your perfume, encircle him with your arms, beg him please, do not go-

He just needs a word, sweetheart. A breath, a sigh, a bloody _hint_-

In New Orleans brews a war that will seat him upon a throne which for a thousand years his father has denied him, and yet a _word_, Caroline.

A word, and he will walk away from this kingdom which for so long has been denied him. A word and he will turn his back, he will open his arms the way he has opened his bloody heart which she has so easily pried apart, and to Paris, to Rome, to Tokyo he will sweep her away.

For a century they will roam.

Before his easel in the morning, beneath her sheets come evening.

Let him show her what a thousand years has not extinguished. Let him show her here is just a bloody _man _who wants, who for so long has been turned aside and pushed away.

But she does not call and he does not stop, and the squeezing inside of him- how could it possibly _intensify_, how could it possibly draw itself like a noose around his heart to constrict the valves which do not pump and the veins which need not flow; why does his chest burn and his throat thicken and his step drag; is there a stone inside his stomach, to sink so quickly-

At Waterloo, the ground gave way with marsh softness, swallowing boots, hoofs, wheels. To take a step was to become mired.

Here there is only the polished gym floor, the celebratory powder in a mercury dust underfoot. There is no sucking down, no holding fast, and yet to walk away, to leave her behind takes so bloody _long_; every step he does not make with supernatural speed is another plea, a holding off: call him _back_, Caroline.

Give him another choice.

What family he has not buried he has driven away; Rebekah languishes in her bitterness, Elijah flourishes in his love, but neither of them do they turn to him.

But this girl, this infant creature with so much to teach him, she who should have presented him her back instead faced him toe to toe, and this is all he has wanted, to be acknowledged.

If she cannot turn away, then there is a part of her who would prove his father wrong, that there is indeed someone who cares, someone who of their own free will wants him back.

To not be alone- what would this be _like_, after a thousand years- to not be tolerated by a sister and endured by a brother -to be _chosen_- how does this even _go_-

But she does not call and he does not stop, and for another thousand years he will be left wondering.

"Tyler is free," he says hollowly, and he shuts his eyes and for just a moment he stands, listening to her breathe.

He vanishes.

* * *

Elena finds her way back.

But something is missing, too much has changed, and when they should be rallying, re-assembling, they instead drift farther away.

There is a park they used to meet at, a halfway point between their homes, and this is where she sits, on nights there is no new Silas drama or Salvatore crisis.

The sky is full of fall, the smell of burning things, of pumpkins in windows and brisk cinnamon wind, and for hours at a time she lets this wind push her back and forth on the swing where for the first time Matt kissed Elena, toes in the gravel, hands in her pockets.

Somewhere along the way, she stopped hurting.

She doesn't remember the transition, if it burned along the way, if at nights instead of sleeping she could only lie twisted up in her sheets, curled tight against the pain, but one day she woke up and she swung her feet over the side of her bed to touch her toes to the cold wooden floor, and there was only an emptiness.

An…echoing, you could call it.

Way down inside of her there is a knot, and it shifts restlessly sometimes, it breaks apart to smolder in her gut and her throat and her eyes, but this emptiness- somewhere inside of her is a little man or something, and he works tirelessly shoveling to pile this emptiness back over the top of all the smoldering, and then she is again engulfed by nothing, and you will never understand just how freaking _terrifying_ this is, until one morning you wake up to this same abyss.

Some days she thinks she can see all the way down to its bottom, and she can point, and pick out the pain that cracked her heart when Tyler fled and the grief that ripped it further when she looked into Elena's blank marble eyes and saw only her own reflection, and way over there- that's the final heartbreak, the girl who for ten years held her hand and painted her toes and walked from prison cell to Stefan's arms, right past her own.

But she can't touch them anymore.

She barely feels them.

And it isn't the balm of time, its anesthetic comfort, the way it smothers you in minutes and hours and days until one day you realize, hey, this break-up is behind me, that missed stag leap is forgotten.

There's just been _so much_. There is a limit, full capacity, and then you can't take anymore, and some instinctive little part of you goes to work, interring this, hiding that, because where are you supposed to _put _it all-

She sits in the swing where for the first time Matt kissed Elena and she stares up into the sky.

Sometimes there are days when the sun sets so brilliantly above this swing that she understands why Klaus paints, why he would try to hold onto something like this when everything else he pushes away, and maybe it's time for a new hobby herself, maybe it is time to seize the few things she can actually _keep_, throughout the gajillion extra years she has been given.

* * *

He paints.

In the streets are little demonstrations here and there of the witch's discontent, of their building enmity, a head here, a heart there, and poor overwhelmed little Marcel, chasing the whole lot round the city trying to pin them down.

He watches through the window of his studio, palette in hand, brush poised, and he does not join in.

He stands instead in this mansion which was once not so empty, surrounded by his art, breathing the acrylic perfume and the charcoal residue in its faint black snowfall on the tabletops, the sketchpads, and somewhere inside of him lurks still the ambition which for a thousand years has fueled him, but what is an empire with no family beside him; what is a kingdom without its queen; what is a monarchy which consists of only one man and his canvas companions?

* * *

Two weeks later, there is another letter.

Sorry Care, he tells her.

There's just not enough for him to come back to, and he has found a pack, and for the first time in _years _he finally belongs.

He will always love her.

She sits on her bed with this letter in her hand and the abyss is still there, and she is still floundering around somewhere inside of it, but this wets her cheeks and hitches her breath for the first time in weeks, because look at how many people she has already _lost_, and here are all the rest of them, just dying to jump ship. What the _hell _is wrong with them anyway- _God_, the _one _person who wants to keep her, and he is this thousand-year-old psycho _maniac _who drowns mothers and hurts friends and probably eats kittens, but only after torturing them in his creepy medieval sex dungeon, or whatever the hell it is he does with all that space.

Sorry, Care.

Sorry, sorry, _sorry God she is so sick of hearing that_-

She looks down at his sloppy chicken scratch scribbles and something surges up from her chest to seize her by the throat and now she tears, she pulls apart, she spreads this letter that is so easily dismantled, this apology that is so effortlessly _broken _across her floor in confetti shards and just for good measure she grinds it in with her heel, turn it once, twice, stomp it down -why doesn't he just _take _that, ass_hole_- she would have _waited_, you know, _she would have waited_, and doesn't that _mean _anything-

She goes alone to her swing and sits twisting in the wind, dragging her toes.

* * *

He lurks.

A shadow man, a periphery creature, glimpsed but never seen.

In theaters, he watches from the corner balcony where the acoustics are best, where he may observe but not be observed in turn, and through musicals, concerts, productions he sits, hands folded, chin on his chest, and to think that once these sorts of displays pleased him, that they with their well-rehearsed lines and flawless contortion of the countenance moved his heart and his hands when now he can only sit in this adhesive chair which holds fast his heavy leaden limbs, staring without blinking.

They're making their move, Marcel warns him.

There's a damn full _moon _coming up- that mean anything to you?

To a man who cannot die but for a thousand years has had no reason to live? To a man who covets but never attains? _That _man? A man who lashed out because no one would see in, a man who for years has subsisted on hate, that simple creature diet which offers no nourishment but neither will it ever cease to sustain?

No, mate.

That man doesn't give a bloody _damn _about your witches, your kingdom, your poor suffering people who collect in grapeshot rubble on your doorstep.

In his home which was once not so empty, he draws incessantly, and always it is her face which takes shape beneath his charcoal.

How long did she wait upon confirming his departure, before calling home that stupid boy who does not deserve her, who with no effort whatsoever holds in his hand everything this man with his simple creature diet has ever wanted- how long did she wait to pop the cork, to pour the wine, to raise up her glass- how long did she _wait _while he stumbled away from her with his numb feet and his crushed chest- _how long_, _love_-

He should have ripped out the boy's heart when he had the chance.

When she stood before him in her cap and gown and he gave her a chance, he asked her with his eyes, please, do not make him beg -imagine what that would do to a man like him, who for ten centuries has had only his pride- when she held out her hand to touch her fingertips to the edge of his art, he should have closed his hand around her wrist, tiny bird thing that it is, and he should have squeezed as she squeezed him, he should have pressed down with his fingertips as she did with her refusal, his heart to her wrist, they are both shattered, sweetheart, call it even- he should have towed her along behind him- he should have _made her come_-

He rips the pages from his sketchpad and along the line of her nose and the sweep of her jaw he tears and tears and tears, and never will it be enough, never can he match this sensation in his chest, never can he _hurt _her enough-

I know you're in love with me, she tells him.

Well, how very presumptuous of her but the truth is this thing called 'love' dried up long ago within him; you see, he's found that the emotions are a sort of entity all on their own, and like humans they must be fed, watered, nurtured, but his he starved to nothing long ago and now he is only a husk.

But then why does he remember her _smile_, why does it turn about inside him cutting here and slicing there- why does he try so hard to _forget _and see only her-

Anybody who is capable of love is capable of being saved, she tells him with her dry chalk lips, but who would throw out the lifesaver to a man such as him?

If he loves -if this feeling has somehow persevered- if this is all that must be asked of him to grope his way back into the light- if he has only to _yearn_, would she want him then? If he came to her with his repentance, with his head bowed and his eyes full, if he insisted, please, show me another way, open a different door- would she live beside him and travel alongside him and fill this void which for so long he has crammed with the letters of others, these tender missives which never bear his name nor extol his virtues? Would she want him _then_, sweetheart?

* * *

Bonnie to the rescue.

Another plot, another spell, and up goes the veil, back flow the spirits that spill from this world into the next.

But there is always a price.

Damon shuts the blind eyes and folds those arctic hands and Stefan stands quietly beside her, and all she can think is, Daddy, why weren't you here for me, why couldn't you slip _through_-

Bonnie Bennett, beloved daughter, loyal friend.

RIP, she says to a cold gray stone with no smile to lift her and no laughter to warm her.

* * *

"We will not live by his rules anymore. We will not be _pushed around_."

How fascinating, he thinks behind his window.

Humans take their feelings and they project them out into the world, they throw out this simmering hatred and fellow man, he brings it to a boil, and is this what she wants from him, this projection, this passing along; is this humanity, love, this blind beast obedience which swells and overtakes and washes away?

Marcel descends and they disperse, and he stands watching the lights of this city that never sleeps, these tiny little white stars that never burn out.

* * *

Her mother cries and Stefan kisses her forehead so gently, and three miles out of town she pulls over to sob until she throws up.

The gravel crunches beneath her and the sky drips above her and there is the sign with its cheerful white paint, Mystic Falls, population 3,000, and for so long she kneels on the pavement beside her car, spitting and wiping and hiccupping.

Please, someone.

Hold her up.

Show her legs how to stand and her shoulders how to bear.

Tell her this _gets easier_.

Tell her that for another bajillion years she will not go on loving and losing and wandering on, always alone.

* * *

They fall to him one after another after another, like dominoes they are, these humans, but though their blood like paint upon his chin may sustain his body, it cannot slake his thirst.

Caroline, he thinks with pencil in hand and her cheekbones beneath him, and how can a bloody _name _echo like this, how can it pierce the heart like a shot-

* * *

If you can say one thing for the sky, it is that it never ends.

This is where you look, if you want to find eternity.

This is what she holds onto, with Bonnie lost and Elena found.

* * *

In a sea, there is nothing which stands out, and humanity is only a tidal surge, heaping up, rolling over, trickling down the aisles to disperse itself from seat to seat. He barely even registers them, these sweating peasants with their sticky candy fingers and their tobacco teeth, jostling one another as horses struggle for position amongst black mud and jockey silk.

But amongst them there is a pulse.

This pulse pulls his eyes from the stage and his hands from his lap, and his heart which for so long has sat in boulder stillness within his stomach- there it goes, from belly to throat, and the way it _swells_-

Amongst them is a heart which is not quite correct, a breath which stretches the lungs and fills the nose out of habit, and layered underneath her perfume there is no sweat, no half-moon stain of the armpit or steaming palms with their moist jungle humidity wiped surreptitiously down the thighs; there is only the strawberry product in her hair, the coconut cosmetic at her wrists.

You with your teenage crushes, your high school adulation- you talk so easily of this thing which man has labeled but never explained, 'love', what a _concept_, how do you know, when can you tell- each twitch of your heart, each surge of your veins is the wriggling of this emotion making itself known, rearing up its head from some abyss to which it will retreat and lie dormant, but there it remains, forever waiting, you are _sure_, you know its touch, you've felt its graze, but he-

He has held it down and drowned it within the muck and for so long it has lain buried, never moving.

But his heart-

His heart which need not pulse doubled its beat when for three eternal seconds her lips did not close upon his offered wrist, and to stop it fast she need only stand before him with her soft smile and her ringing laughter, and what does this _mean_, he asked himself, to be moved so much without taking a step-

Love, no, surely not- an affliction like that, it wouldn't _dare_, not after so long, but just a glimpse of her hair, a sliver of her profile and how he _soars_.

The lights fall.

The curtains rise.

How fascinating she is, to watch.

She has always shown him so many things, with her pretty lips and her beautiful eyes, and he can see every reaction play itself out across her face, how she thrills to the Phantom's appearance in the mirror, the way she lights up as Christine folds herself away in Raoul's kind and loving arms.

But it is the quick thumbing of her eyes during the final scene that ties something hard within his throat and flicks his eyes away toward the right side of the stage where there is no kneeling creature, no pathetic deformation of the flesh or the soul.

A monster, turned out by man, misshapen by hate, bent back upon himself until he must either break or shape himself into something new, remake himself, take the chisel to his soul and the hammer to his conscience.

He hurts because he knows no other way, because his mother with her careless disgust shaped the mold and he must fit himself to it, and to step beyond this place she has carved out and dug deep- how does a man do this, with a face not even a mother could love-

He leaves behind the bodies of two innocents and she cries for him.

Anybody capable of love, she tells him.

And so this pitiful creature on his knees before his throne- this monster in his subterranean dwelling with his black and vengeful heart- he too may be turned around, Caroline, love, he too may be salvaged, made anew, accepted by those for whom he yearns but never calls-

His family which for so long he has left behind, handled as pawns-

He shuts his eyes.

Brother, he thinks, with his fingernails in talons upon the armrests.

Come home.

Sister, return to me.

His paintings are no friends, his sketchings no relations; though they may color his walls they do not tint his monochrome days which for so long stretch out before him.

To be surrounded, and yet always alone- he is so bloody _tired _of this.

* * *

"Well, the vocals were hardly Broadway quality, but this particular Phantom has great potential. A young Ramin Karimloo, perhaps?"

The seat beside her is empty and then suddenly it is not, and she jerks with a gasp back into her own chair, turning his lips up in one of those dimpled smiles she just _hates_.

"God, don't _do _that!" she hisses, hitting his shoulder with her program.

"Enjoy the show, love?"

"Yes," she says primly, carefully smoothing one hand down her jeans, ironing out all the little wrinkles near her pockets. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, I think the more interesting question is what are _you _doing here, Caroline?"

"I meant, like, what are you doing in this _theater_."

"Soaking in a little culture. And you, sweetheart?"

"College assignment. I'm going to the University of Mississippi now. This is for extra credit. For their theater program."

He smiles again. "And you couldn't find any local productions?"

She is very careful not to look at him, to stare with lashes cast down and hands folded tight into her lap, where there are no eyes that see too much or dimples that go too deep.

Sometimes stepping off the cliff takes only a moment, an eye flicker of consideration and then boom, there goes your foot, here follows your body, hope there's something to catch you after such a long long fall.

But she's got to edge, you see. One toe at a time, easy does it, not a curl out of place, not a mascara flake disturbed, because she has been here before, and God it _hurts_; Matt broke her open and Tyler sealed the wound, but never did that lesion close all the way, never did she stop…_leaking_, Caroline Forbes of the Miss Mystic Falls smile and the frail, frail heart beneath layers of bitch.

Tyler walked away and he didn't turn back, and that wound split itself back open and bled itself out, and then Bonnie, God _Bonnie_, who stopped seeing, who with parched lips and dripping nose told her look, it'll be ok-

She's just still so _raw_, ok?

But in a theater full of people he sees only her and when he smiles, when he really really _smiles_, there's this boy, and he peeks out from underneath the monster who killed Carol Lockwood and the bastard who drove Tyler out of town, and way down inside of her there is a girl who loved fairy tales, who teetered in her mom's high heels to hold her dad's waist, and this girl, she _believes_.

"You said this was one of your favorite places in the world, right? So…show me why," she tells him, and for a moment there is no chattering crowd or bowing actors or swishing curtains.

There is a boy, and a girl.

There is the boy's smile and the girl's answering heart.

And this- this is how all beginnings are made.

* * *

In the streets he teaches her to dance, something new, something fast that does not glide or twirl or float; there are no smooth steps or hands placed just so, and she spins wrong and she steps on his feet and he does not care.

He pokes fun at her awkward imitations and her clumsy reproductions, and this is the _thing _about him, how fun he can be, how easily he can make her laugh when he is just Klaus the man and not Klaus the zillion-year-old-special-snowflake, Mr. I-was-first-how-dare-that-Silas-twit-steal-my-thun der.

The crowd thins and the music slows and he pulls her in easily, one hand on her waist, the other laced in her own, and with his smile just an inch from her own he guides her over the pavement, the potholes, around the performer's instrument cases stuffed full of cash and coin.

"And how is the gang doing?" he asks.

She looks away to watch the tour guide lead his next group down the sidewalk opposite them, pointing out landmarks as he goes. "Well, let's see. Elena can't even look at me. Tyler's not coming home. And Bonnie…Bonnie's dead." She blinks and blinks again, and why do people _do _this when the real problem is your throat, and the way it compresses, how it squeezes in and in and in and ties itself so _tightly_.

"I'm sorry, Caroline," he says, and for a moment his eyes linger and her heart flutters, and there is so much behind this- love, lust, longing, call it what you will, but what strikes her most is that he really _means _it.

He stops dancing and he touches her cheek, and you'd think a thousand years of war would turn this touch to sandpaper, that it would scrape, pull, _hurt_, but she feels only his warm palm and his gentle thumb.

* * *

He looks at her pain, and he wants to take it inside of him. To absorb, soak up- what is it that makes a man want to do this, to offer up a corner of himself that he cannot afford just to bring back a smile, to still the trembling lips and dry the shining eyes-

A thousand years ago, his mother with her kind eyes and her soft bedtime voice took away his heart, and this girl, this one tiny small-town girl, she with her tiny rain drop years which amount to just barely a puddle in this great ocean that is time- she gave it back.

* * *

He walks her through the parking garage to her car and she spends too long fumbling the keys in the lock.

"This is weird," she says, turning back to him as she pops the door.

Hands behind his back, dimples in place he stands, just smiling at her. "What?"

"Not trying to kill each other? No Silas, no Elena drama, no weekly Damon wig-out? I mean, I feel like I'm almost normal." She stands with the door between them, tossing her keys nervously in one hand. "It's kind of…nice."

He takes a step closer.

"Well, there's certainly something to be said for putting an entire ocean between oneself and the elder Salvatore."

She laughs and ducks her head. "So…thank you. I had fun today. Maybe…I'll keep this place in mind. You know, for future assignments."

"You know where to find me, Caroline."

"Ok. Well." She turns to take a step up into her rental SUV and now suddenly there is a hand on her arm, and she shouldn't turn back, she _can't_, there's still just so much between them, but her stupid head twists and her even stupider feet follow, and here he is again, half an inch away, God, give a girl a moment to _think_-

But he doesn't move in and he doesn't push forward, he just stands there, one hand on her shoulder, eyes shut, forehead against her own, and has there ever been a moment this quiet before, with just one single breath passed back and forth, a moment in which two people just _exist_, holding on?

He lifts one hand to touch her hair, runs it down across her cheek, and still he maintains that little space between their lips, close enough to sense but not touch.

She shouldn't, God, she _shouldn't_, but when no one else wanted her he never looked away, and today his laughter warmed her and his hands soothed her, and this close she can feel every little muscle in his chest, the coarse prickling of his beard, and so she leans forward, just a little, and she touches his bottom lip tentatively with her own mouth, and when he inhales it is so _sharp_, ragged, is this what she really does to him-

He lets her carefully explore, barely moving, and his lips are pretty much just as soft as she imagined and his hands where they come to rest against her shoulders shake just slightly, and a little timidly she opens his mouth with her tongue, and everything changes.

He slams her back against the SUV, rocks it for just a moment up onto two wheels, but she barely notices this shifting underneath her, because now his hand fists in her hair and his mouth crushes against hers and he lifts her so easily, one-handed he throws her up into the driver's seat and climbs in after her, and _shit_, oh God-

She smashes him into the steering wheel, hears the bleat of its horn, rips his coat at the shoulders as she tears it down over his arms, and seriously, the things he is _doing _to her neck and her ear with his teeth-

"The back seat," she gasps, pulling him by his shirt after her.

He flips her back onto the cushions and yanks her legs up around his hips and now they rock into each other, still fully clothed, his harsh rattling breaths in her ear, his lips on her throat, her chin, her mouth, and she arches up, bows back, pulls his hair, bites down into his shoulder with her human teeth, sinks them in as far as they will go, and now he tears out his wrist, holds it up to her lips -what the hell is he _doing_- and instinctively she latches on, takes a sip- -

His fangs puncture her throat hard, dig in and in and in, and shit, _stop_-

A long pull and she cries out and shudders beneath him, cradles his wrist in both hands now and takes her mouthfuls as fast as she can, bucks her hips up into his, feels one of his hands slide out of her hair to dig into her hip-

He pulls away with his red mouth and his dilated eyes, lashes fluttering, and she drinks longer, harder, crushes his arm to her lips, feels all the rough little threads of his hair beneath her fingertips-

"Caroline," he breathes, kissing from chin to throat to chest, still grinding his hips down into hers, and now she lets up on his wrist long enough to pull his face down to hers for a slick red kiss, tongues warring, hands groping-

He pulls away again, all the way this time, unhooking her legs from his hips, sitting up to wipe his lips with the back of his hand, and a little shake clears the fog from her head, and now suddenly she hears it too, so many hearts with that not-quite-right beat, the scent of man's products but no man underneath it, cologne, deodorant, all the little things you just can't quite stop applying though you have no more sweat to cover-

Klaus opens the door.

He leaves it wide behind him, the little indicator light on the dash pinging insistently.

There is no other sound, just these men in a circle all around them, silently staring, the freaking _pervs_, and carefully she steps down onto the pavement beside Klaus, licking his blood from her lips.

She notices he places himself between them and her, and there is suddenly this congealing in her stomach, a hardening over of her throat and her stiff winter fingers with no circulation in their tips, because look at the tension in his shoulders, the coiling of all the muscles in his arms-

"Klaus?" she asks, and her voice is too small, these men are going to pick up on it, to scent her out like a prey on the run. "What the hell-"

"And what has Marcel got for me tonight?" he interrupts her. "Flowers? Chocolates? A girl does like to be wooed, you know."

"He isn't asking anymore."

* * *

From their center steps a woman, petite little thing, black leather and ripped jeans, but it is the eyes which hold him fast -so empty, they are- and the scent they with their inhuman smell covered so neatly.

He cocks his head. "Marcel sent a _human_-"

She takes another step forward and inside his head there is an explosion, a digging in, a reaching out, and he screams, feels his knees give and his palms impact, and for so long he can only lie huddled, clutching his temples, because on and on this hand which has reached so far down inside of him goes, turning, pulling, _ripping_-

"_Klaus_-"

* * *

There is a flash, as she kneels beside him.

Dim lights on oiled black, and back to her feet she goes, _bring it_, bitch-

But there are ten of them, and one of her, and they seize her tight and wrench her arms back behind her and now this flash becomes an explosion, a flaring out, and what they say, about your life before your eyes, in the moment between holding on and being sucked away-

It's not exactly how it happens.

See, she sees not what she has already done, but all the things she would have liked to do, Caroline Forbes of the eighteen short years, and she wonders if Daddy will be waiting and if Bonnie has found peace, and she's _sorry_, because she wanted to stay, it's too soon to go, maybe she has been given too much in a world where children have only five short years and babies take their first breaths and never drawn another, but still she didn't get hardly _anything_, not even two _decades_, what a _shit _deal-

Don't hurt.

Please don't hurt please don't hurt she is so _scared_-

* * *

His head clears and the woman's hand smokes and Caroline-

_ Caroline_-

"Here's the deal," the woman says, lowering her arm.

He reaches out as they cast her down and the first he rips from spine base to sternum, and the second he beheads, one quick slice of the hand across his throat, and the third he tears through with his teeth, unraveling the man around him, and then her head rolls down to touch her cheek to the pavement and she blinks, and to be bled dry so quickly, to lose your rage in a sudden dam bursting-

Inside of him is a folding, and this folding brings him down to his knees and stretches his trembling hands out to find her cheeks, so damp beneath his fingertips- shh, there now, sweetheart, you're safe-

"_Listen_ to me," the woman snaps. "The bullet's wooden, of course. I assume you can figure that out for yourself. Don't pull it out." She tucks the gun away somewhere behind her. "There's a modified locator spell attached to it. I'm sure you've seen one before- picture a drop of blood on a map, the way it's drawn to a particular area. Her heart is that particular area. The bullet is that drop of blood. Marcel needs your help; he's tired of asking politely. You have three hours to turn yourself over to him. If you don't, she dies. I've put a couple of wards on it for safekeeping. If you try to remove it, she dies. If you try to touch it at all, shift it farther away, she dies. Understand? Once Marcel has you in place, I will reverse the spell, and the girl can remove it herself."

He strokes her curls back from her damp temples.

"And why should I believe you?"

"Then don't. Pull it out. See what happens. Do you know how hollow point bullets work? The way they shatter once they penetrate, to cause maximum damage? That's what this will do, if you try anything. She'll get a heart full of wooden shrapnel."

"How do I know you'll reverse the spell?" he hisses.

"You don't. But I will. I'm not doing this out of some sort of good will toward Marcel. He has leverage, that's all."

"Klaus," she whimpers, and he will not be tugged about this way, a puppet and its master, Marcel twitches, he dances, but God this _girl_ and what she does to him-

He lifts her easily into his arms.

* * *

He sets her down on a couch upstairs, black leather and white throw pillows, and he smoothes the hair from her face and presses his cheek to her forehead, and sorry it had to come to this, Klaus, man, you understand.

Nothing personal.

"Reverse the spell," he demands.

Not until we get you out there where we can make you useful, Marcel counters.

It has already begun.

As the sun dies and the street lamps snap on there is a shifting, a roiling, and through the window behind her couch he watches men become monsters, the shuddering from skin to pelt, from hands to paws- all along this boulevard outside the window they stretch, shimmer, shake off one hide in exchange for another, from corner to corner, from intersection to intersection, on and on and on-

Caroline watches with her labored breath and her wide eyes, and he turns from the window.

"She lives," Klaus tells Marcel simply, and what a smile he gives this former protégé; do you feel it beneath your skin, mate, prickling there, shivering here; does it lift up the hairs on your neck, touch the spine with its hot white knot of static?

Imagine, the things this smile hints at.

Feel it in your bowels, mate, how it lingers on, the _chill _of it.

"She lives, or this entire city dies."

* * *

I'm sorry, the woman tells her.

It's safe now.

She sets her hands on her chest and don't think she doesn't cringe, feeling around down inside that hole for the slippery little tip of wood; don't think she doesn't hold her breath and shut her eyes and pray please, don't let me die, eighteen years, ok, _eighteen years_, how can that ever be _enough_-

She finds the slick little nub of the bullet, pulls it fast, tosses it away with shaking hands and heaving stomach.

"No one's coming to help. Marcel owns this city, the mayor, law enforcement, everyone. This whole street- it's all people like us. Any humans who find their way into this part of the city are killed or turned," the woman tells her hollowly. "So you can see why they're not afraid of being stopped."

They roll over one another, come up bleeding, hurl and stab and slit apart, and through the middle of it all he walks, heart in either hand, darting out with fists and feet and fangs.

"He's not coming back, you know."

She snaps her head around to watch the woman perch herself on the back of the couch, jacket open, one hand in her hair, eyes tired. "What are you talking about? They can't kill him."

"There are thirty witches out there; we have other methods. Marcel never meant for him to come back; he figures all he needs is this one fight- he can put them down fast, with a vampire who can't be killed, who can heal his people no matter how many wounds they take. Sophie knows he's coming. Marcel made sure of that. Klaus is too much of a threat to his standing here." She looks up from her nails to meet Caroline's eyes, and how _old _she looks, this woman who is maybe twenty-three at most. "If you want to leave, do it now. I'm not going to stop you."

She looks back out the window and there is no Klaus now; this bleeding, rolling sea has closed itself all around him, and this is her _chance_, take the opening, make it out to the street, vanish into one of the side alleys, run and do not look back- her car still waits and her campus is still open and she has this whole other _life _to make it back to, where there are only her textbooks, her morning rush to style her hair, to curl her lashes-

To just be _normal_- to blend peacefully in amongst people who do not know her for what she is-

She was going to make it.

Bonnie is gone and Elena has deserted her and for a million years, this is always going to cling on, it will never let go, but you move _forward_, you leave this behind until it is no longer a stab but a prickle, until it chafes but no longer rubs you raw.

He has had ten centuries and she has not even managed two.

"Show me how to get out of here," she tells the young woman with the old eyes, and onto the street she emerges, and into the thick of it she plunges.

* * *

"Sophie. Just the witch I was hoping to see," he says, smiling through his red-painted beard.

A circle of the beasts, she had round her with their bristling ruffs and their snarling teeth, and from both hands they dangle now, these skins which he has emptied of man and beast alike, their steaming bowels in moist pink piles all around him.

"I've a proposal."

* * *

He has probably lived through a billion encounters such as this, crouched in trenches and stormed castles and pulled monarchs weeping from their beds, but this is all new to her, the stench, the screams, the storming chaos of the bodies thrashing, peeling apart, being reduced-

For a moment, she can only stand and watch, shrinking down into herself.

And then they turn, and they come for her.

* * *

"Perhaps your little witchy brood here can take me down, but not before I kill you, which I expect would put a damper on this little revolution, hmm?"

"Why the hell would I trust _you_- do you know how many of us you've killed?"

"Well, one doesn't keep count. That'd be a bit supercilious, sweetheart, wouldn't you say? But you and I, we have something in common. I suspect it would be in our mutual interest to set aside our differences, for the moment. You want Marcel uprooted. And now he's gone and gotten himself on my moody side. I think we might be useful to one another."

"Why wouldn't you just kill him?"

He smiles so pleasantly. "Well, that would be a bit merciful, don't you agree?"

* * *

She is taken down, battered about, ripped and kicked and hit at, and yet somehow this tide carries her back to her feet and sees her through to the other side, but as one wave falls back another ripples forward to take its place, and now she is only instinct, fangs down, veins showing like ink through her skin-

You go to another place, when you kill.

Maybe you think that for someone like her, whose nature it is to dig down and drink deep, this comes naturally, that she revels in the fear, the vacated bladders, the pleading eyes, the upraised hands, but when Katherine smothered her life she forgot to take her soul.

She is still Caroline underneath the fingers that tear and the teeth that take apart.

And these people -that's exactly what they _are_- fathers with kids to come home to and wives to make love to, and look at how much she _cuts short_, with her fingers that tear and her teeth that take apart, but don't stop, no, never stop, you keep going, you cut a swathe through them or they hack a path through you, and she'll think about it later, about this guy who is half-changed when you kill him, who is maybe sixteen with his smooth baby cheeks and his bumpy hormonal chin; who will he not come home to tonight; who will kneel before his grave with flowers in hand and tears in eyes-

She ducks and she strikes out and somehow she moves on, pressing forward, following that path he carved straight down the middle of them all, following his little wet red trophies like bread crumbs.

* * *

There is no smoke, no roaring of cannons, no clattering of nervous young cavalry heels, but the cries of the dying- never do those change, always do they call out, reach up, please, they ask, help me out or put me down-

They forget in their last moments the color of a uniform, the meaning of this sash on your belt, how it was your saber which cut shin from knee, forearm from elbow; they only want to grasp a human hand, a body which holds still the warmth of the living, to hold tight until they pass.

The boys of the trenches were the worst, snarled in their barbed wire beds, scattered about in naked white pieces- such _vulnerability_ there is, in a boot which stands on its own, a foot still to fill it, a leg still to move it, but where is the torso, the mouth with its bravado and the eyes with their panic-

He does not think as he kills; he shuts off this part of himself, boxes it away, because what is thinking but a head full of her- she who should have been saved but may have been betrayed- how can he _accept _that beyond this thinning wall of bodies in their wrestler's knots she may wait with open mouth and eyes which do not see-

A wolf lunges and he backhands them snarling back into the fray, and here is another, and another- crack go their spines, squish go their hearts, do not stand in his _way_ when just beyond their midst she lies waiting for him to come back-

* * *

Hand, heart, _pull_-

She does this so many times, striking out, dodging away, flitting and gliding and circling around.

War is a dance.

You switch partners constantly, and there is no rhythm, no beat to guide her steps, but the sequence, the progression of fingers to chest to ribs to organ, this is all the same, this is something she can understand, catch onto-

She is knocked over, pinned with a cry to the hard pavement underneath her, and they reach for her from all directions, darting in, snapping at her throat, tearing at her legs, and if she can just keep _moving_, if she can just arch her spine, find her feet, thrash out with her teeth, her nails, anything, _God_, just don't let them _keep _her here, helpless underneath them-

To her left there is a small white wolf, too eager, and he dives forward, a flash, but he is not faster than her hand, and she snaps it shut around his throat, cracks his spine with one loud peppermint twist, and now they edge back a little, give her some space, and this is all she needs, just a little breathing room-

* * *

Midnight.

There is a change.

A dying out, a settling down.

This too he has seen many times, the settling of the dust, one might call it, a transition period.

In the beginning there is the braying of the trumpets, the anxious whickering of the horses, the stamping of the men.

Give us action; stretch our stiff limbs and our cold muscles. We came to fight and we aim to kill, only put us _out _there, let us at them.

And then the screams.

The bayoneted boys and the horses pounded to slivers and the officers with their collapsing lines, the swaying center, the toppling right, back, forward, push on, get out.

A tempest.

You are sucked into the hurricane and battered about its center and then out the other side you come, to the silence, the stillness, the men heaped in piles, the horses stacked in mounds.

And this is what he strides through.

This is what empties his heart and drains his lungs.

He does not breathe.

His heart which palpitates out of habit lies dormant.

Imagine, if you will, a hole.

You are cast into this hole with no light, no nourishment, the door is shut, the lock is turned, and forever in here will you waste away to nothing, never again will your eyes see; they turn to milk, your skin to wax.

You become a beast.

You live only on animal impulse, eating rats, scratching away at your boils which itch and your eyes which offend.

You are living without love.

You exist without affection.

In each of these creatures which walk the earth as men but feed upon it as monsters there are such holes, and there are such beasts, and they used to be boys with brothers who loved them and they were once girls with fathers who adored them, but they have been abandoned, and they have turned to hate.

But sometimes, there is a light.

It illuminates just a small corner, it lights hardly anything, but it is _there_, you see it, your eyes hurt but they take it in, and your fingers scramble toward it, every _part _of you yearns toward this small corner, this tiny sliver.

Extinguish the light, and the dark rolls in twice as black, and do you see, do you _understand _why he needs her, why he cannot find her gone-

He walks so slowly, approaching the building at the end of this blood-soaked block.

To the right there is a trail, fresh drag marks and fresher hearts, two long red paint lines along the pavement, and beneath the smell of death, the stink of mortality, there is strawberry, and there is coconut.

Caroline.

He flashes from street to alleyway, and at its end she kneels, hands on her thighs, fingers in her jeans.

"Caroline."

"Klaus?" she whispers, and now her hands open and he sees that her fingers dig not into her jeans but all the little red pieces of her victims, spread out across her knees. "Oh _God_- oh God oh God oh God look at what I _did_-"

Some men are not meant to kill but the government places a rifle in their hand anyway, and thrown into the eye of the hurricane, they flail about just as wildly as anyone, stabbing all they can, shooting their way free, letting themselves be swept along, transformed from man to beast.

But if battle does not claim them, if no rifle fells them and no knife wounds them, they must confront this other side, the silent piles, the still mounds.

"I was trying- I didn't- they would have _killed _me and I couldn't- oh my _God_-"

He kneels before her and lifts a hand to gently smooth the hair back from her eyes as she begins to sob. "Shh. Shh, Caroline," he says so tenderly.

He strokes her hair and she leans her head forward into his chest, and slowly he brings his arms up, even more slowly he lowers his cheek to her head, and he shuts his eyes.

For a very long time, he shuts his eyes.


End file.
